# Claude Code v2.1.236

- Product: Claude Code (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/claude-code)
- Vendor: Anthropic
- Date: 2026-08-19
- Version: v2.1.236
- Original notes: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/releases/tag/v2.1.236
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/claude-code/releases/v2.1.236

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

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- **added** — Added ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_MODEL environment variable to set the model new sessions start on, while /model pick still overrides it and persists across restarts
- **added** — Added notify_when_idle to cross-session SendMessage to ask another Claude Code session on this machine to send one notice when it next goes idle, opt-in and one-shot without polling
- **changed** — Sandbox on macOS: wildcard read-deny rules now take precedence inside allowed read regions, cover matched directories' contents, and cannot be bypassed by renaming the denied file
- **fixed** — Fixed clipboard copy, background housekeeping, background sessions, and local MCP logs breaking after the directory a session had switched into was removed
- **fixed** — Fixed the fullscreen renderer failing permanently after a single failed start by falling back to the classic renderer instead of exiting on every subsequent launch
- **fixed** — Fixed the /model picker rendering taller than the terminal by showing only as many models as fit the window with the rest reachable by scrolling
- **fixed** — Fixed SendMessage calls being rejected when a malformed closing tag left the message text inside the summary field
- **fixed** — Fixed unhandled promise rejections when a subprocess fails to start, for example powershell.exe on WSL with Windows interop disabled
- **fixed** — Fixed fullscreen mode sometimes not showing a newly sent message until the next update after the terminal was resized
- **fixed** — Fixed a blank band that could remain above the prompt after clearing a multi-line prompt and panes not repainting after resizing the terminal away and back in fullscreen mode
- **fixed** — Fixed the managed-settings approval prompt sometimes not appearing at startup while still capturing the first keypress as approval
- **fixed** — Fixed terminal tab titles jumping in tmux by writing the title only when its text changes instead of animating every 960ms
- **fixed** — Fixed an unclear error when the cloud environments list came back empty or malformed
- **fixed** — Fixed the Fable 5 first-time usage-credits prompt auto-selecting the fallback model after 60 seconds with no answer when using Remote Control
- **fixed** — Fixed spinner tips never appearing when the cached guest-pass reward in ~/.claude.json was malformed
- **fixed** — Fixed skills hot-reload in SDK/VS Code sessions raising an error on every skills change after the session's working directory was deleted
- **fixed** — Fixed the Clawd mascot's eyes and feet rendering unevenly in iTerm2 at some font sizes
- **fixed** — Fixed occasional runaway session recaps by capping recap text at 400 characters and cutting at a word boundary
- **changed** — Improved auto mode by setting aside Monitor allow rules while auto mode is active so Monitor commands are reviewed the same way Bash commands are
- **changed** — Added screen reader support for the transcript in VSCode with live announcements for replies, permission requests, errors, and status changes, plus per-turn heading navigation

##### What's changed

- Added `ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_MODEL` environment variable: sets the model new sessions start on, while a `/model` pick still overrides it and persists across restarts (unlike `ANTHROPIC_MODEL`)
- Added `notify_when_idle` to cross-session `SendMessage`: ask another Claude Code session on this machine to send one notice when it next goes idle — opt-in, one-shot, no polling (macOS and Linux)
- Sandbox: on macOS, wildcard read-deny rules (e.g. `**/.env`) now take precedence inside allowed read regions, cover matched directories' contents, and can't be bypassed by renaming the denied file
- Fixed clipboard copy, background housekeeping, background sessions, and local MCP logs breaking after the directory a session had switched into was removed (since 2.1.229)
- Fixed the fullscreen renderer failing permanently after a single failed start: it now falls back to the classic renderer instead of exiting on every subsequent launch
- Fixed the `/model` picker rendering taller than the terminal: it now shows only as many models as fit the window, with the rest reachable by scrolling
- Fixed `SendMessage` calls being rejected when a malformed closing tag left the message text inside the summary field
- Fixed unhandled promise rejections when a subprocess fails to start, for example `powershell.exe` on WSL with Windows interop disabled (regression in 2.1.234)
- Fixed fullscreen mode sometimes not showing a newly sent message until the next update after the terminal was resized
- Fixed a blank band that could remain above the prompt after clearing a multi-line prompt, and panes not repainting after resizing the terminal away and back, in fullscreen mode
- Fixed the managed-settings approval prompt sometimes not appearing at startup while still capturing the first keypress as approval
- Fixed terminal tab titles jumping in tmux (iTerm tmux integration): the title is now written only when its text changes instead of animating every 960ms
- Fixed an unclear error when the cloud environments list came back empty or malformed
- Fixed the Fable 5 first-time usage-credits prompt auto-selecting the fallback model after 60 seconds with no answer when using Remote Control
- Fixed spinner tips never appearing, with a repeated background error, when the cached guest-pass reward in `~/.claude.json` was malformed
- Fixed skills hot-reload in SDK/VS Code sessions raising an error on every skills change after the session's working directory was deleted (2.1.229+)
- Fixed self-hosted runner sessions released on idle, retire, or startup timeout occasionally resuming on another runner before the post-session hook had finished
- Fixed the Clawd mascot's eyes and feet rendering unevenly in iTerm2 at some font sizes
- Fixed occasional runaway session recaps: recap text (automatic and `/recap`) is now capped at 400 characters, cut at a word boundary
- Improved startup performance: the session counter is now written in the background
- Improved auto mode: `Monitor` allow rules are now set aside while auto mode is active, so Monitor commands are reviewed the same way Bash commands are
- Improved auto mode on Bedrock, Vertex AI, and Foundry, and when telemetry is disabled: the classifier now uses the same defaults as on the Claude API, including severity-scored classification
- Improved auto mode: the git status check can no longer be fooled by a repo's `status.showUntrackedFiles=no` setting into reporting a clean tree
- Changed the `/model` picker to highlight only the newest model's name, so the highlight marks the new release rather than an arbitrary subset of the list
- `/goal`: an idle session whose goal is parked behind long-running background work now checks in automatically after 30 minutes (then 1h, 2h) instead of waiting for you to return
- `/usage` now shows the usage-credits spend row for Team and Enterprise members, and shows a capped row at 0% before anything is spent
- SIGTERM in print/SDK mode no longer records an interrupted turn or

_[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/releases/tag/v2.1.236]_